It is present day practice to package appliances in fiberboard cartons or packages during storage and shipping in order to protect the appliances against damage. Various types of corrugated fiberboard packaging arrangements have been devised in order to facilitate the storage and handling of these appliances. In order to take advantage of all shipping and warehousing space, it is desirable to be able to stack the cartons closely adjacent to one another with as little space between the adjacent cartons as possible. This usually requires some means for engaging the cartons from the front thereof when handling of the carton becomes necessary for movement of the appliance.
One satisfactory method of handling the cartons is to lift them from the top area by means of a lift truck having a spade or lift member which engages the carton. With such an arrangement, the operator of the truck does not require help in loading and unloading the cartons and the cartons may be stacked without any or a minimum amount of space left between them. It is common practice to provide a flap or fold in the top or cap of the carton under which the lift member of the truck is inserted. Many such top lifting cartons have been devised in which the top or cap of the carton is interlocked with the four sides of the carton, thereby transferring the force of the lift truck to the side through them to the bottom of the carton to lift the appliance packaged therein.
In other prior art methods it has been found unnecessary to completely enclose the appliances during warehousing and shipping. In fact, it is believed that cartons or crates that are open around the sides thereof decrease shipping and handling damage because they tend to promote greater care by the shipping and transfer personnel. They also reduce to a great extent the amount of fiberboard material necessary to form the shipping carton and therefore reduce substantially the cost of the carton. They also permit visual inspection of the appliance, without the necessity of removing it from its carton.
Various types of fiberboard cartons have been devised for encasing appliances. These cartons are normally provided with top and bottom caps over the top and bottom respectively of the appliances and a plurality of posts of fiberboard or other material disposed between the top and bottom caps along the edges of the appliances. In order to prevent stripping the top of the carton away from the appliance special structures have had to be devised as shown in U.S. Pat. No. 3,029,994-Chapman, assigned to General Electric Company, the same assignee as the present invention, for transferring the vertical force of the lift member from the top cap of the carton to the appliance and to the bottom cap for lifting the appliance.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide for an appliance an open-type carton having an improved structure which permits the carton and appliance to be lifted by means of a vertical lift member adapted to engage the upper portion of the carton.